Newsticker provides two different views for browsing, marking and
reading news. The variable newsticker-frontend determines the
actual headline reader.
In this view separate windows are used for displaying feeds, headlines and their descriptions. The feeds are shown as a tree on the left hand side, headlines of the currently selected feed are shown on the upper right side, and the full contents of the currently selected headline is shown on the lower right side.
Feeds can be placed into groups, which themselves can be placed in groups and so on. This results in the tree which is displayed on the left. A node represents either a feed or a group of feeds holding a subtree. The following commands allow for managing groups.
Add a new feed group. Name of the new group and of the parent group
must be entered. If The name of the parent group is the new group
becomes a top-level group. (newsticker-group-add-group)
Moves a feed into a group. The name of the group must be
entered. (newsticker-group-move-feed)
The position of groups and feeds within the tree can be changed with these commands:
Shift the currently selected feed up and down within its group.
Shift the currently selected group up and down within its parent group.
The group settings are saved to a file either automatically when newsticker is being quit or manually when the following command is executed.
Save treeview group settings.
The Treeview is updated automatically as soon as new headlines have arrived.
The Treeview is used when the variable newsticker-frontend is
set to the value newsticker-treeview. (Alternatively it can be
started with the command newsticker-treeview.)
In this view all headlines of all feeds are displayed in a single buffer (*newsticker*). The modeline in the *newsticker* buffer informs you whenever new headlines have arrived.
You may want to use imenu with Plainview, which allows for navigating with the help of a menu. In this case add the following to your Emacs startup file (~/.emacs).
(add-hook 'newsticker-mode-hook 'imenu-add-menubar-index)
(Note that preparing the Plainview takes significantly more time than starting the Treeview because all headlines are displayed in a single buffer. When you have subscribed to a large amount of feeds you may find that Newsticker’s efforts of minimizing rendering times, caching rendered items and so on you may find However, when you have subscribed to a large amount of feeds you may want to give the Treeview a try.)
The Plainview is used when the variable newsticker-frontend is
set to the value newsticker-plainview. (Alternatively it can be
started with the command newsticker-plainview.)
Additionally, headlines can be displayed in the echo area in the style of a news ticker.
Headlines can be displayed in the echo area, either scrolling like
messages in a stock-quote ticker, or just changing. This can be
started with the command newsticker-start-ticker. It can be
stopped with newsticker-stop-ticker.